{"podcast":{"title":"Unspun","slug":"unspun-6601575","podcast_index_feed_id":6601575,"rss_url":"https://feeds.redcircle.com/56c05004-5d7f-4f0c-a3b9-5eac7d975704","website_url":"https://redcircle.com/shows/unspun","image_url":"https://media.redcircle.com/images/2025/3/25/21/3bbd2b70-1ef2-43ec-aa38-e4f2050eb2b1_e4f4-fe50-466c-bbfa-59a7dbde77df_unspun-purple.jpg","author":"Amanda Sturgill","episode_count":112,"summary":"Unspun is critical thinking about the news. Hear real examples, past and present, of newsmakers attempting to mislead you and understand how they manipulate the truth. Learn how to avoid being swayed by fake news and misinformation. Get Unspun, because you deserve the truth.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-29T00:19:34.263030+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/unspun-6601575"},"episode":{"title":"The hidden cost of paywalls: How restricting news hurts democracy","slug":"the-hidden-cost-of-paywalls-does-gating-news-hurt-democracy","published_at":"2026-07-14T11:00:47+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/unspun-6601575/the-hidden-cost-of-paywalls-does-gating-news-hurt-democracy","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/unspun-6601575","url":"https://mswmedia.com/show/unspun/","audio_url":"https://pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/audio3.redcircle.com/episodes/7c3e0879-e492-4b5e-b2db-ae39107c54dc/stream.mp3","summary":"Quality journalism costs money while misinformation is usualy free? But most quality news is behind a paywall and few people want to pay. In this episode of UnSpun , DrSturg traces the history of the news paywall from the early days of online newspapers to today's subscription economy and examines what decades of research tell us about who pays, who doesn't, and what that means for public knowledge. Follow @drsturg on Bluesky DrSturg's book, Detecting Deception: Tools to Fight Fake News teaches you how to identify this kind of shady language yourself, using real examples from the news. Check it out and be smarter! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy","meta_description":"Quality journalism costs money while misinformation is usualy free? But most quality news is behind a paywall and few people want to pay. In this episode…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1638,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/unspun-6601575/episodes/the-hidden-cost-of-paywalls-does-gating-news-hurt-democracy/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/unspun-6601575/the-hidden-cost-of-paywalls-does-gating-news-hurt-democracy.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}